The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss. Alfred Zeisler. 1936.

This is another public domain movie, so it hasn’t been restored, and the audio is rather bad on this copy. But Cary Grant is Cary Grant.

This British movie seems a bit… basic. American movies of this era were more technically accomplished, I think? Yeah. There’s a lot of clumsiness when moving the camera around and some non-ideal blocking.

It’s a pretty classic storyline: Rich guy pretending to be poor to prove some obscure point. There’s so much fun to be had within that framework, but this feels so… abbreviated. They’ve got one fun scenario in, and then the next one is kinda really beyond absurd, and then it’s almost over. It’s really sloppy, lazy writing. I wonder whether the original 1920 movie was better, because the script to this one by horror movie writer Balderston is such a wasted opportunity.

It’s hard not to enjoy watching a Cary Grant movie, though.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Bretaigne Windust. 1957.

I bought two DVD box sets of public domain movies… and this was the only movie that was on both of them. So perhaps it’s really really good?

Or perhaps is just one of the very few public domain movies that are in colour. Because as we got to the late 50s, the companies got wise to the worth of even catalogues of B movies: You could sell them to all the new TV stations that were starved for content.

So from now on the rights were snapped up from the estates of bankrupt movie companies.

I think! I haven’t read a comprehensive history of the business side of this era, but that’s what I’ve pieced together from tid-bits. It may be wrong! Don’t listen to me!

But… this movie is… pretty tedious. It’s all in cod-oldee tymey rhymey, and kind uninteresting.

I bailed after half an hour.

Made For Each Other. John Cromwell. 1939.

I thought this was from the no-frills 50 DVD box I bought… but this seems like a too expensive movie, and I can’t see why it’d be in the public domain. I mean, it’s a Selznick movie!

With real stars!

So perhaps it’s from a separate DVD… but… I can’t find it…

Lombard is great and Stewart is Stewart, but this is a pretty odd vehicle for them. It’s not a very high concept movie at all: It’s about two pretty normal middle class people and their frustrations with their employers and family.

It’s got a nice light touch. It’s not actually funny, but it’s amusing. It’s all about frustrations and embarrassing situations and stuff.

This doesn’t seem surprising:

Reception

The film lost $292,000 at the box office.[1]

I really wonder what they were thinking when they made this movie. It’s such a hard sell plot-wise (i.e., the plot’s not there), so you’d expect it to be somehow interesting in other ways (huge laffs (no), exceptional screen chemistry between the leads (no), trenchant social commentary (no)), it’s just so odd that anybody worked to have this made.

Perhaps it went through a blanderizer, but was interesting at some point in the production history?

There are some good scenes in here.